Girl Talk
| Origin = Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania | Genre = Mashup, electronic, dance, glitch, experimental, plunderphonics, hip hop | Occupation = Producer, musician | Years active = 1996–present | Label = Illegal Art 333 Recordings 12 Apostles Records | Website = Twitter account }} Gregg Michael Gillis (born October 26, 1981), better known by his stage name Girl Talk, is a musician specializing in mashups and digital sampling. Gillis has released five studio albums on the record label Illegal Art and several extended plays on 333 Recordings and 12 Apostles Records. He also forms one-half of the production duo Trey Told 'Em with close collaborator Frank Musarra. Early life and education Gillis began experimenting with electronic music and sampling while a student at Chartiers Valley High School in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania suburb of Bridgeville. After a few collaborative efforts, including playing keyboards in the experimental music band The Joysticks, he started the solo Girl Talk project while studying biomedical engineering at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. In school, Gillis focused on tissue engineering. Gillis states his musical inspirations to have been Squarepusher and Aphex Twin. Career Gillis worked as an engineer, but he quit in May 2007 to focus solely on music. |publisher=Spin Media |date=2007-02-07 |accessdate=2010-05-30 |author=brandon}} He produces mashup-style remixes, in which he uses often a dozen or more unauthorized samples from different songs to create a mashup. The New York Times Magazine has called his releases "a lawsuit waiting to happen," a criticism that Gillis has attributed to mainstream media that wants "to create controversy where it doesn't really exist," citing fair use as a legal backbone for his sampling practices. In an interview with Triple J on January 29, 2009, Gillis noted that he uses Adobe Audition and AudioMulch. He has released five studio albums, all on Illegal Art: Secret Diary (2002), Unstoppable (2004), Night Ripper (2006), Feed the Animals (2008), All Day (2010). Additionally, he has released the extended plays Stop Cleveland Hate (2004), Bone Hard Zaggin' (2006), and Broken Ankles (2014). After the success of Feed the Animals, for which listeners were asked to pay a price of their choosing, Gillis made all of his other albums similarly available via the Illegal Art website. A tour in support of All Day began in Gillis's hometown of Pittsburgh with two sold-out shows at the new Stage AE concert hall. For possible future projects, Gillis is considering creating an original song rather than full-length albums featuring songs by other musicians tied together. Stage name Gillis has given different explanations for the origin of his stage name, once saying that it alluded to a Jim Morrison poem and once saying that it alluded to an early Merzbow side project. Most recently, he attributed the name to Tad, an early 1990s band based in Seattle. Gillis has said the name sounded like a Disney music teen girl group. In a 2009 interview with FMLY, Gillis stated: The name Girl Talk is a reference to many things, products, magazines, books. It's a pop culture phrase. The whole point of choosing the name early on was basically to just stir things up a little within the small scene I was operating from. I came from a more experimental background and there were some very overly serious, borderline academic type electronic musicians. I wanted to pick a name that they would be embarrassed to play with. You know Girl Talk sounded exactly the opposite of a man playing a laptop, so that's what I chose. Acclaim Night Ripper was ranked number 34 on Pitchfork Media's Top 50 Albums of 2006, number 22 on Rolling Stone magazine's Best Albums of 2006, and number 27 on Spin magazine's 40 Best Albums of 2006. In 2007, Gillis was the recipient of a Wired magazine Rave Award. Feed the Animals was ranked number four on Time magazine's Top 10 Albums of 2008, while Rolling Stone gave the album four stars and ranked the album number 24 on their Top 50 albums of 2008. Blender rated it the second-best album of 2008. Gillis' hometown of Pittsburgh officially named December 7, 2010 "Gregg Gillis Day". Since Gillis releases his music under Creative Commons licenses, fans may legally use it in derivative works. Many create mashup video collages using the samples' original music videos. Filmmaker Jacob Krupnick chose Gillis's full-length album All Day as the soundtrack for Girl Walk//All Day, an extended music video set in New York City. Discography :Main article: Girl Talk discography ;Primary albums * Secret Diary (2002) * Unstoppable (2004) * Night Ripper (2006) * Feed the Animals (2008) * All Day (2010) Filmography * Good Copy Bad Copy (2007) * RiP!: A Remix Manifesto (2008) References External links * Girl Talk on Twitter * Girl Talk on Myspace * Girl Talk on Wikipedia * Girl Talk on AllMusic * Girl Talk on Discogs * Girl Talk on MusicBrainz Category:Girl Talk Category:Musicians